Yellowcake: A Novel

For her acclaimed collection of stories, Red Ant House, Joyce Carol Oates hailed Ann Cummins as "a master storyteller." The San Francisco Chronicle called her "startlingly original." Now, in her debut novel, Cummins stakes claim to rich new literary territory with a story of straddling cultures and cheating fate in the American Southwest.

Yellowcake introduces us to two unforgettable families—one Navajo, one Anglo—some thirty years after the closing of the uranium mill near which they once...